In an era when technology has advanced far. Imagine if doctors, nurses, and medical professionals use AI to help treat patients, helping diseases that used to take a long time to diagnose. It can be treated at the right point many times faster than before, how good will it be for humanity?
Even now. The Thai medical industry may not have used AI much, but there is one doctor who is determined to help treat patients and help ease the burden of personnel. Lecturer from Siriraj Hospital Founder of the technology platform PreceptorAI It was created specifically to reform this industry.
And will AI really help revolutionize the Thai medical industry? Find out in this interview.
Determined doctors want to see a good quality of life in the medical society.
Dr. Piyarit told me that he originally graduated with a bachelor's degree from the Faculty of Medicine, Siriraj Hospital. Mahidol University with the dream of working as an internal medicine specialist in blood diseases.
But when he was a medical student, he had to be stationed at Samut Prakan Hospital. He learned the brutal experience of working overnight because hospitals in other provinces have relatively few doctors compared to the total number of patients.
"The demand for doctors in the labor market is increasing every year, no matter how much production increases, it is not enough. The number of doctors per patient is much lower than in Bangkok. It is true that accelerating the production of doctors is enough to help. However, the number of doctors in the bureaucracy is also decreasing at a higher rate. This makes it insufficient to treat patients."
Dr. Piyarit emphasized that during the COVID-19 pandemic, The pandemic is a period when the working conditions of doctors are extremely poor and heavy, so I understand why doctors in the bureaucracy resign as a joke.
"Maybe I have to stay on duty for 32 hours straight, which is quite a bad thing. When the doctor has to stay on duty for tens of hours. As the patient continues to be treated, there must be some numbness. We will never be able to treat patients well. At that time, I thought that there was anything that could help the doctor work better. While the number of medical personnel is the same, we have found that the use of AI to help doctors in their work may be the answer."
"That made me think that if I work the same way, I may be able to treat about 10,000 people in my whole life, or at most 100,000 people, but if I use technology and AI, I will help many more people, so this is the beginning of the transition from applying for a scholarship for the Nawamethi Siriraj Project or a Researcher Medical Lecturer Scholarship to study blood diseases to applying for a scholarship to pursue a master's and doctoral degree in Medical AI in the UK." The scholarship student doctor explained.
Technology must help solve the complexity of ease of use.
In addition to the insufficient number of doctors. Another problem that Dr. Piyarit often encounters is having to work that is not directly related to medicine, such as various documents, especially documents related to patient information, which are complicated, chaotic, and complicated. Often, you have to fill in the information on paper first and then enter it into the computer system, which is an unnecessary waste of valuable time.
Or sometimes, using the LINE application to send patient information is not as beneficial as it should be. At the peak, a hospitel must be arranged to accommodate a large number of patients. Patients have to send information to the medical team and nurses, such as the results of each person's oxygen measurement every 4 hours, totaling hundreds of messages.
And often, the information in LINE is also easily dropped, such as opening and forgetting to write it down, which is another headache that slows down the work time. This makes the already tiring work even more tiring.
Dr. Piyarit found a solution that the creation of AI was created in collaboration with Professor Teerawit Wilaiprasitporn from VISTEC, the Medensy team led by Dr. Sandee Rattanasomruek, and also supported by private companies such as PTT and AWS.
And when the data is where it should be, If the doctor continues to investigate, he will immediately know which patient should be treated at this time. It is not checked in the order of messages sent on LINE, which may cause some patients who need urgent treatment to be missed.
"This is a simple example of how AI can help improve the public health field immediately and eventually lead to the publication of research in leading international journals." Dr. Piyarit gave an example.
AI Awareness in Thailand Although it is still small, there is enough hope.
As mentioned, Dr. Piyarit is currently studying Medical AI in the UK. Traveling thousands of kilometers across the ocean, he found out how much more people in foreign countries are aware of technology, which is significantly more than in Thailand.
"In England, they think that anything that can be deployed and trusted will have a system in place. There are many studies that have been carried out. moreover This school also incorporates AI lessons into the curriculum of medical students. Meanwhile, Thailand does not have an official curriculum."
"We have to admit that AI is getting closer and closer to us, and in fact, it's starting to play a role in other sciences, such as finance, for example."
Another thing that Dr. Piyarit found is that the Thai public health industry is still afraid that AI will cause doctors to lose their jobs, and if it is used to treat full patients, can it be trusted? Although if you compare the pros and cons. The benefits of using AI are greater, both helping to treat more patients and lightening the burden more.
Dr. Noi gave a very useful and amazing case study, which is a biopsy of a cancer patient that will help to get results many times faster.
"Suppose we have a patient with cancer who needs to have a biopsy for examination, and when the biopsy is completed, we will send it to the lab to examine and analyze the tissues, where there will be a pathologist who will examine what kind of cancer the patient has.
What's even more important is that in addition to AI being able to diagnose cancer, It can also predict with a certain degree of accuracy how the tissue has mutated genetically. Normally, you have to pay hundreds of thousands of baht to get this kind of in-depth information, and most importantly, many times if you send it to the lab for analysis, you may not find any abnormalities.
However, if AI sees that there may be mutations, it will make doctors more confident that there is a better chance of using it for better use. It has been shown that this technology not only helps to treat patients faster, but also can reduce costs better.
However, Dr. Piyarit admits that even though AI can help diagnose diseases like this, it is still not as good as a professor-level pathologist. however If you look at the positive side, it can help a lot. Especially in Thailand, where there are not many pathologists. However, the number of patients is many times larger.
Increase your self-worth by using AI to prevent anyone from competing for work.
Although he encourages the use of AI to help doctors, Dr. Piyarit always reminds that although AI will help make work easier and more convenient, users must not trust 100 percent of the data from AI without checking it first.
Dr. Piyarit gave an example of using AI to create computer vision images with data from the patient's X-ray film: If there are marks, scratches, or something abnormal in the image, the AI may immediately misinterpret the image (Computer Vision is an artificial intelligence technology that allows computers to see, understand, remember, analyze, and explain images).
"Or using ChatGPT to find information, the answers obtained from it will be very handsome. It looks very smooth, even though in fact, it may be completely wrong. We see that it is very useful, but we still have to examine the information carefully."
These are just the first steps in adopting AI. The developer believes that in the next 10 years, AI will be breakthrough in many fields, becoming smarter and more accurate, but don't worry, because in the end, artificial intelligence will not replace humans. It does not make doctors lose their jobs, but they will help them do their jobs better.
"Doctors who know how to take advantage of AI will increase their own value and have a better quality of life compared to inactive doctors." Doctors from Siriraj Hospital confirmed.
PreceptorAI New Hope Helping to raise the level of Thai medicine on par with the rest of the world.
In addition to being a scholarship student and a doctor from Siriraj Hospital. Dr. Piyarit is also the team leader and founder of the medical technology company PreceptorAI, which aims to bring medical AI to help doctors efficiently in their hometown.
Dr. Piyarit He explained that PreceptorAI is a platform that provides information similar to ChatGPT, but it is a dedicated source of medical information, and all medical professionals can search for information about various diseases in Thai. It helps ensure accurate information. It is reliable, and fast compared to data from other platforms.
"In the past, AI training used databases from the West, but often those data could not be adapted to the context of Thai society or the context of ASEAN.
The doctor also revealed that in addition to providing medical information through LINE Official or the existing website, the team is currently seeking permission from relevant organizations such as ISO and FDA to use the Preceptor AI system to connect directly to hospitals. To help make it easier for healthcare professionals to use. It also makes it easier to increase productivity.
However, These things cannot be effectively achieved. Without the support of government agencies, Dr. Piyarit believes that if the government encourages the full use of artificial intelligence, it will become an important variable that creates a new S-Curve for Thailand.
"The medical AI business not only helps the economy grow, but also reduces the hard work of medical personnel and improves the quality of life of Thai people throughout the country."
"Lastly, I hope that the images we have seen, such as patients waiting since 7:30 a.m., but having a blood draw at 9-10 o'clock, and then waiting to hear the doctor tell them the blood results in the afternoon, to find that it is not much, they can take the medicine home right away, which is a waste of time and may cause some people to get worse first, etc.
"All of this, even though there are the same number of medical personnel, will definitely be able to help take care of many times more patients." PreceptorAI founder concludes
